Cold fatigue

February 10, 2010

One of the toughest things for me to deal with around this time of year is what I like to refer to as cold fatigue.

As a west coaster, I’m used to December, January, and February sucking. Those are the winter months, after all. But in the middle, sometimes end, of February you start to see those kind of light-at-the-end-of-the-tunnel kind of days that make you believe Spring is mercifully on its way.

Not so in Boston. Those do not exist. Not in February, at least. February is cold and it sucks. And then March is cold and it sucks. And then April, really, is largely cold and miserable.

It’s awful, I tell you. You associate March Madness with sunny T-shirt days and all of a sudden you make the brilliant decision to go to school on the east coast and all of that’s thrown out the window.

most pictures of winter and snow make it look majestic and inviting. not this one, this one gets to the heart of it. cold sucks.

My own charming self-pity aside, you probably wonder how this relates to Bay Area sports. Well, tenuously, really, but I do have a point here.

At this time of the year for Bay Area sports, and really sports in general, you get kind of a similar cold fatigue. The Super Bowl comes and goes, and you’re kind of left with the ho-hum portions of the NBA and NHL regular season.

Desperate for spring training to start, anxiously anticipating March Madness, and all you have to pass the time is the race for some of the most uninspiring playoff spots in all of professional sports – the bottom seeds in the NBA and NHL, where half the teams in the league make the playoffs anyway.

Like, congratulations, Miami, you made it into the playoffs despite being two games under .500, now go lose four games to LeBron James and enjoy your offseason.

And I don’t think sports cold fatigue sets in especially well in the Bay Area market, where, come February, you’re left with two of the most predictable teams in their respective leagues.

On the one hand, you have the Golden State Warriors (owners of a sparkling 13-37 record, putting them in an exciting race with Minnesota for second-worst in basketball) who you know are going to be bad. They’re bad every year.

Case in point: Golden State of Mind’s pre-game poll for Monday night’s game against Dallas asked fans whether they were rooting for the Warriors, and Don Nelson in his pursuit of basketball’s all-time coaching wins record, or Dallas, and the opportunity to ring another one up in the loss column as the Warriors chase second-to-last place to give them a better shot at landing Kentucky’s John Wall in the next draft.

The result? 63% of respondents (362 votes) were actively rooting against the Warriors just so they could improve draft position. The GSoM tone was equally optimistic:

You know the Mavs, you unfortunately know the Warriors too well. Hopefully the Warriors surprise us with a win. Don’t hold your breath though.

And then on the other hand you have the Sharks, who are remarkably good in the regular season year after year almost to the point where they’re boring. Especially since they flame out in the playoffs equally remarkably year after year.

It’s a little hard to get worked up about any regular season win with a team that has made it an annual tradition of racking them up before they become most important.